Civil Service Reform. 





CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 


A 


THANKSGIVING SERMON, 

PREACHED AT THE 


First Presbyterian Church, Mantua, 


Notiembcr 28, 1872, 


BY 


/ 


Rev. H. AUGUSTUS SMITH, 

M 


PASTOR. 


[published by request.] 


PHILADELPHIA: 
SHERMAN & CO., PRINTERS. 
1872 . 







s 




> 


SERMON. 


“When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice; but when 
the wicked beareth rule the people mourn.” —Proverbs 29 : 2. 


Appropriately do the Thanksgiving proclamations 
of successive years call on us to thank God for the 
abundance of the harvest. It seems fitting that in 
this autumnal Sabbath of the year, when shrub, and 
sheaf, and vine are choristers proclaiming the benefi¬ 
cence of God, we should yield to the tranquil influ¬ 
ence, and lift our thoughts to Him who pours the 
plenitude and bounty of the season. When the Great 
Teacher wished to convey the deepest truths to His 
disciples He led them into solitary places, among the 
hills, or into the rustling wheat-fields, or amid the 
cool ravines where the brook Kedron ran singing to 
the sea. Hence it were never amiss if, on these occa¬ 
sions, forgetting man and his mistakes, we turned our 
thoughts exclusively to Him whose bounty, reflected 
in the four-fold year, culminates in its last and richest 
cycle—in purple grapes and yellow corn; in harvest 
moons and happy homesteads; and all the blithesome 
imagery connected with the rich and jocund autumn. 



4 


But while we are grateful for these things to-day, 
and join in the acclamations of a united people shout¬ 
ing their gratitude, from Maine to the Carolinas, and 
from Sea to Sea, we are led in the Providence of God 
to meditate a question that is thrust upon the mind 
of every American citizen—the question of Political 
Eeform. The proclamation calls on us as citizens to 
thank God for that government which is the creation 
of the people, and subject to their behest.” Again 
we have passed through the Olympian contest of a 
quadrennial election, forty millions of people exercis¬ 
ing their rights of suffrage, and lifting into the Chair 
at Washington the President of 1872. There is sub¬ 
limity in the spectacle. The preliminary agitation 
has come and gone. The fires of fiiction blown to a 
furnace-heat by the press, and the public meeting, 
cooled suddenly over all the land after the electoral 
procession had put itself in motion, and, armed but 
with those small bits of white paper, dropped them 
quietly into the ballot-box— 

“ Soft and still, 

As snowflakes fall upon th^ sod, 

Yet swift to do a freeman’s will. 

As lightning does the will of God.” 

And as the sun went down, and the telegraph pro¬ 
claimed the result in every city and village of the 
land, the silent acquiescence of the vanquished to the 
will of the majority told out to all the world how 


5 


possible is the alliance of liberty and law; of personal 
freedom, with submission to authority and order. 

Yet there are questions started here which it were 
wise to ponder. Political events are happening which, 
from their swiftness, their suddenness, and their 
magnitude, compel us to give heed. Even those who 
had taken but a languid interest in political affairs, 
are being forced by events to study with fresh ardor 
the current history of the hour. Unusual questions 
concerning government are beginning to occupy men’s 
minds. No questions are more difficult. History 
itself is chiefly a record of the failures of govern¬ 
ment.” The earth is one vast grave of cultures, 
polities, and institutions. Just now one problem 
looms before us all, demanding a wise and prompt 
solution, that viz., of Civil Service Reform. It in¬ 
volves, indeed, the further question whether the ship 
of state is to pass into the open sea, or go in among 
the breakers. I am moved then to discuss to-day a 
question in which we all have a peculiar and personal 
interest. 

From the battle of Pydna, two centuries before 
our era, the Roman Republic dated its decline. The 
hour that set the keystone of her empire in the con¬ 
quest of Macedonia, and the subsequent overthrow 
of Greece and Carthage, fixed also the beginning of 
her fall. On the wealth thus suddenly acquired, a 
new aristocracy arose, of crudest tastes and plebeian 
instincts, pandering to the coarsest appetite, and 


6 


flowering in the rankest forms of social luxury. The 
age of the Catos had passed away. Plain living 
and high thinking” were no more. This new aris¬ 
tocracy, pampered with success, gave all its mind and 
energy to riches. The Roman satirist of a later day 
put it into the mouth of the average citizen : “ Get 
riches; honorably if you can, but in any event get 
riches.” Ransacking the treasuries of Ormus and of 
Ind, they held the gorgeous Orient in fee. But with 
the riches of the East they absorbed its vices. Politi¬ 
cal preferment was onl^^ a stepping-stone to wealth, 
and wealth was sought for personal indulgence. So 
all the offices of State became the prize of plunderers. 
They plundered one another. They flattered, and 
then fleeced the people. At last they clutched each 
other’s throats, and would have wrecked society but 
for the iron hand of Caesar and the Empire. So the 
Republic rotted into its grave, and the Empire rose 
upon its tomb. 

More swift than that of Rome has been our growth 
and power. Since severing from England a century 
ago, we have increased our territory threefold. Run¬ 
ning through every soil and climate of the earth, 
from the St. John’s to the Rio Grande; from the 
embracing clasp of the Atlantic to the unbroken 
seaboard of the West; our territory spans an area 
to-day greater than the old Roman circuit of two 
thousand by three thousand miles that belted the 
Mediterranean. Our population has swelled from 


7 


three millions to forty millions of a free people. 
In resources, we have leaped from poverty to a 
millennium of thrift and comfort. The Roman con¬ 
quests in the East brought in a tide of wealth that 
turned the brain of the many-headed multitude.’' 
We have outstripped the Roman progress. They 
say that if you stand upon the prairie some fine 
night of the later summer, you can hear the corn 
grow, so swift are nature’s operations there. Like 
that has been the sudden growth of our resources 
under the keen and eager climate of our century. 
You can hear these fortunes growing almost in a 
single night. The very air is sifted with the golden 
haze of material speculation. We know nothing of 
poverty as the Old World knows it, and as history 
records it. The skeleton face of Famine has never 
looked into our homesteads, or peered among our 
sheaves of plenty. An English monarch hoped the 
time might come when every peasant in the king¬ 
dom might have a chicken in his pot on Sunday." 
We have no peasantry in the strict sense. Our farm¬ 
ers own the land they cultivate. Our traffickers are 
the honorable of the earth. Our artisans ask no odds 
of fortune. Our very laborers demand of capital 
wages that will give them the sweep of the market.” 
Ever since the gateways of the Continent were thrown 
open three hundred years ago, our soil has been the 
El Dorado of the working man. There is no nation 
in the world so rich as ours. England may have 


8 


more centres of drifted and concentrated wealth ; but 
she has far less than we of a diffused capital, per¬ 
meating its masses and its millions with a conscious¬ 
ness of thrift and competency. 

And as the tide of wealth rolls on to higher levels 
year by year, there is induced a greed of gain sur¬ 
passing that of any nation on the earth. Nowhere 
will money go so far to make a man conspicuous. 
It measures all things. The spirit of the age en¬ 
hances this. It is the century of inventions. Over 
the broad spaces of our land we are building, from 
Sea to Mountain, the palace of material industry; 
filled from basement up to roof with the music of 
free labor. The rapid whirl and rush of all things 
is to an intense materialism. The territorial sweep 
of our empire, carrying all climates and all produc¬ 
tions on its surface; the wheat-fields of the central 
regions, and the ocean prairies of the West; planta¬ 
tions, vineyards, rice-grounds, and cotton fields; ca¬ 
pacious harbors, and rivers that move perennial to 
the sea,—all these have stimulated in one direction 
the national mind and enterprise. And so the only 
aristocracy we have is the aristocracy of wealth. 

“By gross Utilities enslaved, we need 
More of ennobling impulse from the past.” 

With no historic shadows to calm and tone us down, 
we are all in the whirl of a new and formative 
civilization. The aristocracy of birth, and taste, and 


9 


talent, is of small account alongside of the social 
influence that wealth brings in its train. So ‘‘the 
learned pate ducks to the golden fooland a man’s 
possessions of head and heart are of less account than 
what he carries in his wallet. Our talk is mainly of 
trade and finance; of banks, and bullion, and bonds; 
of canals, and railroads; of grains, and grasses, and 
soils; of mills, and machinery, and fabrics. 

Of course we must not exaggerate. Much of this 
lies in the natural and necessary course of things. 
We have a broad Continent to reclaim; forests to fell, 
and rivers to bridge, and mountains to tunnel, and 
mines to open. All this is the raw work our century 
has to do. From this material we are to fashion the 
armor, the clothing, the furniture of civilization; to 
subdue and round our hemisphere, and fit it up to be 
the spacious and beautiful abode of a free, and vir¬ 
tuous, and happy people. Though we have spanned 
the continent with a ring of iron, the smoke of the 
Indian wigwam, blown westward by the breath of 
civilization, still curls amid the prairie, and the wild 
buffalo yet roams his ancient pasture-lands. 

We are in the heart, then, of the great movement 
that is precipitating Europe and Asia upon our shores 
from either side, and pouring along our iron tram¬ 
ways the tides of a tremendous immigration. 

And not alone in the cities is the pulse of this pro¬ 
gression felt; it throbs in the rural districts. The 
ancient stock of farmers, it is said, are dying out. 


10 


The old, ancestral, hereditary love of the soil; the 
hearthstone, and the local church and parish, around 
which thought, and sentiment, and patriotism clus¬ 
tered and ripened in the early days, is fast becoming 
a tradition of the past. The love of money, its port¬ 
able exchange and quick returns, has driven the sons 
of farmers into the commercial cities, leaving behind 
them generally an inferior class of men, who have no 
hereditary sentiment, no local attachment to the soil, 
and neighborhood, and parish church, such as their 
fathers had. And so the local pride, and feeling, and 
tradition; the landscape, the library, the family 
circle, the 


“ Chapels lurking among trees, 

Where a few villagers on bended knees 
Find solace which a busy world disdains;” 

all that once nourished the finer feeling and the im¬ 
palpable spirit of religion and of patriotism, is pass¬ 
ing from the current talk and tradition of the land. 

“ Far back in ages, 

The plough with wreaths was crowned. 

The hands of kings and sages 
Entwined the chaplets round. 

Till men of spoil 
Disdained the toil 
By which the world was nourished. 

And pelf and pillage were the soil 
In which their laurels flourished.” 


11 


And is this the outcome of it all? That grand 
Colonial era—those centuries of Quaker faith and 
Puritan zeal—was it only to rear a continental work¬ 
shop filled with material industry, “ fops melted with 
baths and perfumes” and men grimy with toil? No, 
it was something better the Founders toiled for, when 
they laid in their “ elevated and holy and resolved 
frame” the foundations of our greatness. 

“ Leave to the soft Campanian 
His baths and his perfumes; 

Leave to the sordid race of Tyre 
Their dyeing-vats and looms; 

Leave to the sons of Carthage 
The rudder and the oar; 

Leave to the Greek his marble nymphs, 

And scrolls of wordy lore— 

but be it ours to fill with a purer civilization, a more 
intellectual and Christian industry, this social struc-* 
ture which we see around us. 

For the truth is, we might be worse off than we 
are. Knowledge comes if wisdom lingers.” Our 
system of common schools is the best in the world. 
We have a spontaneous and diffused culture which is 
better than the patronage of States; and though our 
colleges have not yet rivalled the European univer¬ 
sity—the universitas doctorum et stiidiorum ; they are 
fast aspiring to that level. And besides all this—our 
arts, and scholarships, and social culture—we have 


12 


what outweighs all the rest, a free Church in a free 
State; good preaching for the masses; a strong, ag¬ 
gressive Christian sentiment, and princely charities 
maintained on the voluntary principle by the free 
gifts of the people. Here is the secret of our strength; 
here is the hiding of our power. 

What, then, is our great need just now? Strange 
as it may sound, I answer, a better civil government. 
This matter has been overlooked. With our hands 
full of material enterprise, we have neglected, in our 
struggle for the Continent, political science and po¬ 
litical duty. In this land of the almighty dollar, 
where the sin of not being rich is only atoned for 
by the effort to become so,” every man has been 
looking out for number one. We have cared for the 
Family, we have cared for the Church; but we have 
overlooked the’ State. The men who might discourse 
in public debate and preside in public meetings, are 
preoccupied with the chink of coin, the whir of 
spindles, and the dust of trade.” In the fierce rivalry 
of political competition, with every man eligible to 
office, and with trade absorbing the keenest energies 
and best minds of every generation, good men have 
been too busy to keep bad men out of office. The 
consequence has been that politics takes up with 
small men, who have no business capacity or work 
of their own to do, and who become popular with 
certain classes because having no particular opinions 
of their own. These are the men into whose hands 


13 


political power has drifted by default. So bad men 
nominate bad men for office, and good men vote and 
pay their money to get them elected. Gold shaped 
the verdicts of our juries, the appointments of our 
rulers, and the enactments of our legislators. Thus 
public life had become synonymous with knavery. 

Our best men have avoided politics as something 
they could not touch without being defiled. Bank¬ 
notes have been displayed in halls of legislation with 
the shrewd remark: That is the logic for legisla¬ 
tors.” We say that in this free land the masses 
govern. Not so. The masses vote: a few men 
govern. Did you ever see in the coffee-shops at Na¬ 
ples a figure grinding in the window ? He seems to 
turn the wheel, but in reality the wheel turns him. 
So with our government by the masses. They seem 
to govern, while politicians turn the wheel. Behind 
the convention stands the caucus, and behind the 
caucus is the clique, made up most likely of bank¬ 
rupts, adventurers, and sharpers. So good men will 
not meddle with the thing, and politics becomes a 
strategy,” flections go by bribery, and financial en¬ 
gineering wins the day. 

To the victors belong the spoils;” ^. e., one party 
loses pelf and power, and the other party snatches 
them. We have seen this carried in our own and a 
sister city to the pitch and summit of audacity. Our 
municipalities have been a scene of shameless whole¬ 
sale robbery. When the New York robbers rifled 


14 


the community and turned its pockets inside out,’’ 
they turned round coolly and inquired, What are 
you going to do about it ? ” For a time amazement 
paralyzed the city. But for a moment only. A 
quick reaction dashed with iron hand the scoundrels 
from their seats, and now the echoes of reform are 
ringing through the land. We hear the thunder 
that announces the uprising of the nation, and that 
is destined to sweep crystal clear the air in which 
men think and breathe upon this continent. We 
have done with the rule of expediencies. The path 
of political justice is a straight line henceforth, not 
to be traversed by the sinuous politicians who leave 
their zigzag trail on party platforms, and wriggle 
through every kennel” of expediency. 

The track of God’s thunderbolt is a straight line 
from justice to iniquity— 

-“Straight forward goes 

The lightning’s path. Direct it flies, and rapid, 

Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.” 

God’s trump is blown against iniquity, and it 
is only a question of time. It is being decided in 
our day that liberty does not mean mutiny; that 
freedom does not imply the destruction of govern¬ 
ment. We need to emphasize this feature. I mean 
the supremacy of Law —that Law which is written in 
the statute-book, and in the Statute-Book of Heaven, 
We need to have the people learn that political free- 


15 


dom is only possible where justice is in the seat of 
authority; where ‘*the unwise are directed by the 
wise, and those who are intrusted with power use it 
for the common good.” To this end we must develop 
everywhere a sense of the sacredness of government, 
and teach the people to look religiously and with a 
reverent eye upon the civil ordinances. This cannot 
be so long as government is looked upon as some 
imaginary social contract; the mere expression of the 
will, the actual and present will of a majority. No 
majority ever made it, or can make it. Its origin is 
the bosom of God—its “ voice the harmony of the 
universe.” It is the absolute justice of the State, en¬ 
lightened by the perfect reason of the State. It is 
the birth of no one epoch. It is the gift and aggre¬ 
gate of the best experience of the ages—widening, 
deepening, washing itself clear, and pouring its im¬ 
perial treasures like golden sands at the feet of new 
generations! This lifts the idea of government into 
a sacredness far above the whim or madness of the 
hour. Nothing so high as to be above its power; 
nothing so low as to be beneath its care. In a sense 
above, superior to the wisdom and the will of any 
age and people, there is something impalpable, and 
pre-existent, and authoritative about it that should 
excite a filial affection and a filial awe. Let it be 
graven deep into the heart of the people, that they 
may learn to reverence, obey, and enforce it. 

To this end let the coming generation be instructed, 


16 


as never before, that the structure of the State—the 
genius of the constitution and the law—is worthy 
their study and their care. We need to educate in 
this direction the public thought and conscience. 
The common people need educating in political jus¬ 
tice. They must be made to see that the frauds and 
corruption of a ^^ring” government not only bear 
oppressively upon the rich, but on the poor as well. 
The millions filched from the public treasury are not 
only mortgaging the property of holders of real estate, 
but the very bread of the poorest man who handles 
a hod or wields a spade. We are to show that the 
evils of exorbitant taxation come not only to the 
doors of taxpayers, technically so called, but to the 
interests of all citizens alike. We want to indicate 
the bearing of bribery and corruption on work and 
wages, house-rent and groceries. The humblest citi¬ 
zen must be convinced that these city bandits are 
stealing his children’s bread, and that municipal re¬ 
form means ‘^cheaper rents, and better dwellings; 
more meat, warmer fires, purer air, healthier families, 
and longer lives.” 

And not only the expediency, but the morality of 
all this must be set forth. The old thinkers used to 
teach that sins against the State—a board, a corpora¬ 
tion, a department—were magnified a hundred fold 
by their very relation to the State. This teaching 
needs to be revived. The rising generation must be 
carefully instructed that the State is far more sacred 


17 


than any individual; and that to rob a department 
is worse than to rob a widow or an orphan, as 
bringing disaster to the millions of widows or orphans 
of whom that government is the strength and shield. 
Strike down the government, and you strike down 
the guardian of the commonwealth. You introduce 
a contagion that ends in death. 

This then is the one question of our day that looks 
all others out of countenance—the question of muni¬ 
cipal reform. Our cities need to be better governed 
than they are. They need enfranchising. No politi¬ 
cal interest or party, whether in State or Nation, 
should meddle with the affairs of the city. Our 
towns should be independent of outside patronage or 
party. The government of municipalities, like Phila¬ 
delphia or New York, should not be controlled at 
Harrisburg and Albany. New York has swept her 
own streets lately, and resumes her place among the 
decent cities of the land. Her bad men are at last 
in bad repute. An angered public sentiment has 
dashed them on the rocks, and there is small chance 
of their ever grasping the helm, or even getting into 
port again. We are entering on an era of transition. 
The Convention now in session is handling the ques¬ 
tion of municipal reform. None could be more vital. 
The strong stock of our political freedom struck root 
in the municipalities. Here, and not in the counties, 
was its original and better life. The history of liberty 
the world over is associated with the freedom of the 


2 


18 


towns. So in the old Roman and Saxon eras. So 
in the history of the German liberties. All through 
the middle ages, the Hanseatic League of cities kept 
the last spark of liberty from being trodden out under 
the heel of feudalism. 

In the early days of New England each independ¬ 
ent town and city was a kind of miniature republic. 
The best men were thus known and chosen. Ruffians 
were not appointed to keep the peace, nor sharpers 
to collect the taxes, and thus the nation came to be 
vital and indestructible in every part. In these 
municipalities were sown the stars of empire and the 
germs of freedom. Of course they are not the State; 
they do not wield the higher powers of government 
—‘Hhe mace of legislation” or ^‘the scales of justice,” 
the purse or the sword of the commonwealth. Still, 
everywhere we find (as in New England) the purest 
and stanchest political freedom where the municipal 
system has been most perfectly organized. 

For so only can the people hnow the men they are 
called upon to place in power. Our first and press¬ 
ing need is men for government, able men, not tools. 

I have two millions in niy coffers,” said Napoleon, 
^^and I would give them all for Ney.” The great need 
of government to-day is the attraction of able men to 
the public service. It is not the machinery of gov¬ 
ernment that will save a nation; not even free 
schools, cheap books, and an enlightened public 
opinion. India has had schools for fifteen hundred 


19 


years. Spain has had for three centuries her free 
municipalities. De Tocqueville tells us that before 
the Revolution, public opinion was as enlightened in 
Franee as it is to-day. But none of these things 
have regenerated India, and Spain, and France. 
What they needed was men; live men of quick and 
flexible minds, accessible to the ideas that were float¬ 
ing in their time, and that could look responsibility 
in the face. What American citizens need is the 
opening of their own eyes to the intelligent, and 
thoughtful, and determined consideration of the great 
problem of Government. Good men must rouse them 
from their apathy. Every American must be put on 
guard. The private interest of the citizen must give 
way to the interest of the city. We must use the 
tools that are to shape our destinj^ Charters must be 
framed or modified. The right men must be placed 
in power. Good men must regulate the caucus, and 
secure the nominations there. They must stand at 
the polls, and make a business of it, and see that no 
bribery or persuasion turns the day. Then they 
must watch the canvassers, and secure an accurate 
counting of the votes. And finally, they must fol¬ 
low up their agents, and insist on their discharging 
faithfully the duties they have sworn to do. All 
this is asking much, but it is worth the cost. It is 
far better than to be plucked and plundered, and then 
scorned. So only can we get our money’s worth of 
honest government, and make our institutions, in 


20 


fact as in theory, our pride. Bad men must be put 
aside. The army of incompetents and office-seekers 
must be routed. There must be an end to putting 
men in office for the mere sake of keeping them em¬ 
ployed. The principle on which patronage has been 
dispensed by modern governments on certain restless 
and officious men reminds me of an English fable. 

There was a boar who rooted up his master’s pas¬ 
tures. The farmer resolved to put a stop to this by 
putting a ring in the nose of the boar. This was 
soon done; and though the animal made a great noise 
about the operation, it was not more painful than 
putting ear-rings into a girl’s ears—a common prac¬ 
tice in nations not supposed to be barbarous. 

“ The boar was very proud of his nose-ring, and 
told the other denizens of the farmyard that he was 
the only animal among them worthy of being thus 
decorated. 

When, however, the boar was driven into the 
open pastures, he found that he was unable to get at 
the sweet roots, and must content himself with what 
he found on the surface. 

Now swine are very clever creatures, and the 
boar said to himself, ^ I see why they gave me this 
odious nose-ring. It was not for honor, but to pre¬ 
vent me from rooting in the fields so much.’ 

Therein he was wiser than many men who do not 
perceive that honors are conferred upon them to pre¬ 
vent them from continuing to be as troublesome and 


21 


mischievous as they have hitherto proved themselves 
to be ” 

All this, however, is a detriment and disgrace to 
government. The object ought to be not to keep 
these troublesome agitators employed, but to secure 
the ablest and best men for the service. 

How then shall these men be found ? This is the 
one question of the hour—the question of Political 
Reform. No Christian nation needs it so much as 
we do. Our civil service is probably the most corrupt 
on earth. Every four years we fight at the elections 
on the principle, that ^^to the victors belong the 
spoilsand the victors are bummersand the 
contest is a rout; and offices are asked for men, not 
men for offices; and the public service ” becomes 
the public crib.” 

This system must be eradicated root and branch. 
We must leave off our mad pursuit of riches and 
care more for the State, and invoke the help of the 
best men the country over, no matter what their po¬ 
litical following may be, so that they are with us in 
this work of casting out devils. The hour is struck. 
The opportunity is upon us. We cannot be too quick 
to move. The aloe blooms but once in a century. 

We must begin now to lay foundations as did the 
original builders of the State. This brings us to a 
question already mooted by Congress and the Press, 
and fairly before the country—the question of Civil 
Service Reform. Two years ago the idea took shape 

3 


22 


in England. The plan is simply to find the best 
men for the public service by a system of competi¬ 
tive examination. The Chinese government has for 
ages stood upon this principle of choosing their ablest 
men for official employment. In Prussia, young men 
are schooled in the universities, and only enter the 
civil service on sustaining a rigid examination. In 
Britain this has always been the case with those who 
were candidates for government patronage in India, 
and recently, by order of the Queen, the whole civil 
service of Great Britain has been thrown open to 
competition as unlimited as that by which the Indian 
offices are filled. This strips away all adventitious 
advantage. Men enter the arena on equal terms. 
No family or party influence can foist a dull man 
into a department. It is intellectual “pace” that 
wins. 

This plan insures two things; a better class of 
talent, and a better style of training. 

It discovers talent. It throws the public service 
open to unlimited competition. It invites all grades 
of intellect and culture in the State. It draws from 
the millions of male adults throughout the land, in¬ 
stead of from a few thousands of political partisans 
who chance to be in power. Thus it subsidizes a 
larger area of mind. It enlists all classes alike in 
the support of government. It gives them interest 
in a subject which before they had never thought to 
study, still less attempted to mould. 


23 


And so, as it discovers talent, it develops culture 
too. The plan of competitive examination allures 
naturally the best youth in the country; those who 
have received a high class education, first at the 
upper school, then at the college and the university. 
It brings into the service those who have the fine tact 
of acquiring knowledge which comes of hereditary 
culture; while it implies, with rare exceptions, the 
virtues inherent in such a course of study; industry, 
and perseverance, and temperance, and self-control. 

And so, while the examination system, sifting the 
pure diamonds from the dross, would immeasurably 
exalt the public service, enriching it with men of 
high attainments and high aims, it would give a new 
and powerful impulsion to the higher education all 
over the land. 

Also it would simplify and adjust the methods of 
political preferment. Promotion will come naturally 
in the train of fidelity and competency. Instead of 
a ‘^quadrennial change of help,’^ bringing in every 
four years thousands of incompetent officials, there 
would be a legitimate promotion of the tried and 
competent. We must open to men the inducement 
of a life-long service. “No service of the State will 
be conducted well if you cut off the sources of hope.” 
The appointing power might he safely left in most 
cases to the heads of departments. An experienced 
official was once heard to say: “All would go well 
in the way of choice if only each man were allowed 


24 


to choose his own immediate inferior/' There would 
be no fear of ‘‘jobbery'' in this. The best men in 
power are most anxious to breed up competent suc¬ 
cessors. Of course this would diminish the frequency 
of subordinate elections. But it is this very fre¬ 
quency of elections, obliging the people to decide at 
the polls upon the fitness of a great number of can¬ 
didates of whom they can know nothing but their 
names, that lies at the root of nearly all misgovern- 
ment in city and state. On such a plan the offices 
are given pretty much at random. Here is one 
danger of excess of suffrage. Partisans come into 
power. Especially in cities, how often is the quiet 
conscientious worker, who has no time for candidat¬ 
ing, set aside for the noisy demagogue, who brings 
himself demonstratively before the public. “The 
danger to be apprehended,” says Chancellor Kent, 
“ in governments resting in all their parts on uni¬ 
versal suffrage, is the spirit of faction, and the influ¬ 
ence of active, ambitious, reckless, and unprincipled 
demagogues, combining, controlling, and abusing the 
popular voice for their own selfish purposes.” So 
they have prevailed in certain States to make even 
the judiciary elective by direct vote of the people, 
and for brief terms. Our danger then is not so much 
in the line of executive appointment. Let us choose 
our best men, and then trust them. 

Finally, to this end the Church must bear her tes¬ 
timony. The open intelligent eyes of our millions of 


25 


Christian people must be fixed on the abuses of our 
time. Only religion can quicken the public con¬ 
science, and form a basis of conviction on which legis¬ 
lation can act. The idea of right, nurtured and ex¬ 
panded by religion, is the basis and support of gov¬ 
ernment. Only in the prayers of God’s true people is 
lodged the power that can right the wrong of this 
great land. Is the Church ready for this great work? 
Is she prepared to lift her voice against this seething, 
rank corruption ? Not till she stands forth as she 
never yet has done for purity of teaching and purity 
of life. Not till some thunder-burst of moral senti¬ 
ment has swept the Church itself from end to end, 
and scourged out the dextrous cheats and unscrupu¬ 
lous defaulters from her own communion. So only 
can she denounce with an unsparing tongue each 
powerful and gilded wrong, and lay the golden I'eed 
of the sanctuary alongside of every twisted line of 
public policy. There is too much rose-water religion 
in the Church; too much of that relaxing sentiment 
which is making the community at large more and 
more tolerant of crime. Authority has given place to 
suasion, and discipline has relaxed her tone, and 
lures men in accents ^‘musical as is Apollo’s lute” 
along some primrose path of persuasion. Our grand 
old Calvinism has gone out of fashion with its doc¬ 
trine of justice and decrees, stidening with its iron 
strength the political and social fabric. Theology has 
degenerated into humanitarianism ; emasculated doc- 


26 


trines have been taught respecting government— 
family government, civil government, divine govern¬ 
ment—until the entire body politic is threatened 
with softening of the brain.” 

But the tide of sentiment we think is turning. 
We breathe in a freer air. And when from these 
Christian millions the prophetic prayer goes up, 
Break Thou the arm of the wicked and the evil 
man, 0 Lord,” the fracture will come like “ the rent 
of an earthquake.” This power is conferred upon 
God’s holy ones : This honor have all His saints.” 

On this we base the tenure of the Great Republic. 
Out of the religious impulse is woven the immortality 
of nations. Hope never spreads her golden sails ” 
hut on unfathomable seas.” 

“ Thou too sail on, O Ship of State! 

Sail on, O Union, strong and great! 

Humanity with all its fears, 

With all the hopes of future years, 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate! 


“ In spite of rock and tempest’s roar. 

In spite of false lights on the shore, 

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! 

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee; 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears. 

Are all with thee,—are all with thee!” 




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